Why Medabots Fans Still Seek Out Takara’s Landmotor Figure

Landmotor Medarot Collection Figure by Takara

From Game Boy Mechanic to Physical Toy

The Medarot franchise launched in 1997 when Natsume (now Rocket Company) released an RPG for the original Game Boy built around a specific idea: every robot in the game is made of four swappable parts — head, right arm, left arm, and legs — and the player freely mixes and matches components across different units to create their own configurations. That mechanic, called the parts-exchange system, was the franchise’s defining feature. Takara’s Medarot Collection figure line took that same logic and built it into the toys themselves.

Each figure in the Collection series is a hard plastic, articulated toy — ABS-type construction rather than soft vinyl — and the parts are physically interchangeable across different figures in the line. A collector who owns multiple Collection units can combine components from separate machines, replicating exactly what the game encouraged players to do. This was not a gashapon (capsule toy) or a food toy (shokugan); the Collection line was a dedicated standalone retail series, typically sold in boxes or blister packaging as part of Takara’s official Medarot merchandise program.

Landmotor and the KBT Classification

Landmotor is one of the Medarot units in this line. Its design classifies it as a KBT type — the Kabuto (rhinoceros beetle) category, which is the same type as Metabee, the robot partnered with the anime’s protagonist Ikki Tenryou. The KBT type is arguably the most central visual identity in the entire franchise, so Landmotor shares its silhouette lineage with the series’ lead machine. Visually, the figure is distinctive: a white base with blue and green accents, a domed blue helmet, ribbed torso plating, multi-port weapon attachments on both arms, and green legs — a design that reads as purposeful and combat-ready in the way late-1990s Japanese mecha toy design often did.

Whether Landmotor appeared in the 52-episode TV anime that aired on TV Tokyo between 1999 and 2000 — produced by Bee Train — or exists only within the game series is not certain. The Medarot franchise includes a large number of robot designs that appear exclusively in the games or only as illustrated entries without anime appearances, and Landmotor’s specific origin within the franchise is not confirmed from the available information.

A Franchise That Reached Two Continents

The Medarot anime was broadcast in English-speaking markets under the title “Medabots” — on Fox Kids in the United States and YTV in Canada around 2001 and 2002 — which brought the franchise to an international audience that had no direct access to the Japanese games or toys. Takara’s domestic toy lines, including the Medarot Collection series, were not widely distributed through formal retail channels outside Japan, so these figures have historically reached overseas fans almost entirely through Japanese import sources.

The Collection line sits within a specific moment in Japanese popular culture: the late 1990s through early 2000s, when franchises structured around collecting, customizing, and competing had broad commercial momentum — a wave that Pokemon helped establish from 1996 onward. Takara, a manufacturer already well known internationally for Transformers and Diaclone, brought its toy-engineering experience to the Medarot license, translating the game’s central mechanic directly into the physical object. For fans of the Medabots era who know the franchise from either the games or the English-language broadcast, a Japanese-market figure that embodies that part-swapping design is a tangible artifact from the franchise’s commercial peak.